Coach Nick is in the house.
In an effort to get to know my community and do something fun, I jumped at the chance to volunteer to coach a local pee-wee soccer team with the parks and rec department in my city. As a bonus, my son Sam got an instant spot on the team as well, which helped to get him out and meet some friends, too.
Win win right?
Except, I’ve never coached any sport. Of course, I’ve played my fair share of sports growing up, but it’s been a while (the most recent thing was taekwondo), and I never played organized soccer. When I told this to the coordinator when expressing interest, they reassured me that experience isn’t really important at this age. In other words, as long as you are good at working with kids and are enthusiastic about the role, you’re 90% of the way there.
Coaching a team of thirteen 7-8 year old boys certainly requires a lot of enthusiasm. Although I’ve been obsessing over the best drills and exercises to do with the team, it is true that this rigor isn’t really that important. The most important thing is being present and having fun with the kids. It’s like being back on the playground. I keep thinking about what I would have wanted to do in practice and do as much of that as possible.
I’ve also been lucky to have had another parent with some experience raise their hand to be my assistant (as well as plenty of tips from my brother-in-law coach).
Together, we’ve held five practices over the past few weeks, and we won our first game of the season, 1-0.
To top it off, Sam scored our winning goal and seems to have found his happy place on the field with the other boys.
This is shaping up to be a fun season.
Comments welcome!